Dear
Mr. Diva,
Which of the Backstreet
Boys is top, and which is bottom? Please answer swiftly, as a
round of martinis hangs on the accuracy of my guesstimation.
--Gineva
Dear
Gineva,
Top, bottom, bottom,
top. Isn’t it amusing how, in a world of choices, all the choices
are the same?
Before we begin, Mr. Diva points out that, for purposes of this
essay, the terms “boy” or “girl
group” refer not to those staffed by frontspeople who can actually
sing, play an instrument, or write music. A “boy-”
or “girl
group” is created by labels and/or PR firms and sustained
by cunning producers, with the "musicians" functioning as nothing
other than rhythmic cake decoration. That some of the survivors
of this machine have achieved spectacular careers can be attributed
to a) their talent being bigger than the package offered, and
b) the superior wisdom of Mr. Diva, identifying such legends where
appropriate, dragging them out of the bar or 12-step program,
and gently shoving same back into the spotlight.
Boy- and girl-groups
belong to the great tradition of Junk Rock, that self-referential
art form whose charm, and essence, is its very disposability.
Whereas Ronnie
Spector’s smoky, quavering alto only improves with every shot
of tequila she downs, Jimmy Osmond’s
sugary falsetto must, of necessity, transmute. Junk Rock groups
of both sexes represent a powerful presence which alleviates teenagers’
angst while extorting their allowance from their pockets. Just
as every generation has its collective neurosis, so does every
decade have its girl
and boy group.
Being entirely a phenomenon of a teenage audience--and teenagehood
being measured not in physical years but placement along the continuum
of maturity--the boy group du jour offers a clearer distillation
of the collective unconscious than the top ten grossing slasher
flicks of any given year.
Time passes, and the wheat loses no time in separating itself from the chaff. In other words, whereas Frankie Valli can still pack a theatre in Atlantic City, none but the most die-hard fan would still Roll in Bay City. With few exceptions, the legends of boy grouphood have not been as thoroughly catalogued as their compatriots of the X chromosome. What we really need (and Mr. Diva means no offense to dahling Ronnie) is for those good folks at Rhino Records to curate an anthology of bare-not-hair-chested falsetto pop, performed in what would be five-part harmony if more than two of the parts could actually harmonize.
Right on schedule, the 1990’s have birthed the Backdoor Boys. Mr. Diva, not entirely trusting his objectivity where well-groomed lads with taut abdomens are concerned, conducted a straw-poll among his numerous friends, balancing the conventional wisdom against his personal appraisal. The results, appended below, confirm everything he suspected.
Nick (Vanilla
Spice), being both the youngest Backdoor
Boy and an Aquarius, is the group’s swing. The evidence of
this is the excessive sissiness of his floppy blond haircut juxtaposed
against his predilection for basketball drag. The standard deviation
for this inference is plus/minus ten. Also involving his youth,
Vanilla
Spice is the group’s most compulsive, or at least most reliable,
masturbator. This makes him likeliest to switch roles mid-frug
and most excited about doing so. The standard deviation for this
inference is zero.
Brian (Cardio Spice) expends the most energy during tearful l-u-v songs and wears the most blatant Chelsea Boy haircut. He purveys the deepest chasm of faux sensitivity even as his eyes crinkle from the depths of his self-absorption. He is a card-carrying top, with intermittent lapses into bottoming when Vanilla Spice wants a chance to plug. The standard deviation for these inferences is zero. On those occasions when pluggers outnumber plugees, Cardio Spice runs the video camera.
Kevin (Bluegrass Spice) is a self-confessed farm boy, meaning his first sexual experiences were with watermelons and cooperative livestock. Such a wholesome upbringing invariably results in an unsophisticated sexual palate, thus Bluegrass is a top, and a helluva top at that. However, the standard deviation for this inference is plus/minus fifteen, for the fluidity with which Bluegrass Spice shakes his hips during those dance-flavored aerobics routines indicates that it may be he who puts the backstreet in the boys.
Howie D (Frankenspice)
is a jiggin’ monument to mixed signage, being the most overtly
macho in presentation but the girliest singer. As such, Frankenspice
invokes the “butch in the streets/fem between the sheets” rule,
virtually embodying the great tradition of bottoming. As any male
who’s experienced it will verify, there’s nothing like having
one’s prostate massaged to cause one to sing high, loud, and proud.
The standard deviation for this inference is plus/minus seven.
AJ (Taco Seasoning) is the blandest of the bland: a straight bottom. Witness the cookie-cutter averageness of his facial foliage and lack of muscle tone below the abs. His standard deviation is none.
You are going to need those martinis,
Gineva--whoever’s buying. The superpopularity of the Backdoor
Boys offers reason enough for the more delicate among us to
hide under the covers with the blinds drawn.
Let us link hands. Gineva, you have surely been haunted by videos, mocked by racks of magazine covers, cursed by unprecedented airplay. We recall with significant horror the video in which the Boys dance the monster mash, without evidencing a shred of awareness that they channel the precocity of youth via the Groovie Ghoulies. Oh, yea, they are monsters. Gaze upon them and be afraid. Be very afraid.
--Mr. Diva
Dear
Mr. Diva,
Re Bette Midler
(Ask Mr. Diva, August
19), that’s real nice, but I meant Bette Davis.
--Antonio
Dear Ant’ny,
Bette Davis indeed. Ha ha. We will have our little joke, won’t
we? Mr. Diva is certain you are one of those department store
snipers who attempt to relieve customers of three months’ worth
of drug-and-booze money during one trip to the counter. Listen,
buster, Mr. Diva can spot jokers from miles away. Mr.Diva has
observed you, often with your name tag still affixed, saluting
your skinflute in that same department
store’s remotest men’s room.
As you are fully aware, Miz Davis is one of the
all-time grandes-dames of divahood, an apex of sisterhood shared
by rare and august company including Pam
Grier and Cleopatra.
Divahood pushed to the nth degree becomes megadivahood (MDH in
the industry). MDH has surpassed all acid tests of mere divahood,
including bad men, bad movies, and bad hair, to land smack dab
in the middle of bad attitude. A megadiva hides razor blades in
her afro, keeps a basket of asps by the throne, can render an
Academy-Award winning leading man into a supporting player in
two seconds flat.
Miz
Davis has carved a special place in this pantheon. Louise
Brooks had long since turned to avocational cannibalism when
Bette stormed Tinseltown, took one look around, and pronounced
with chilling authority that the place was a dump. From this pronouncement,
she forged history by playing the hell out of every archetype
from slattern to harridan, gathering along the way Oscars, the
SAG presidency, and a legendary feud with Joan
Crawford, whom Bette affectionately called “Whore of Babylon.”
Next time you find yourself in Blockbuster’s
“Classics” section, Mr. Diva recommends the following. The early
years: “Of
Human Bondage,” in which Bette sports a nimbus Patti
LaBelle would have envied; and “Dangerous,”
in which Bette gives her first on-screen lesson in messing up
other people’s lives. The Golden Years: "Mr.
Skeffington,” in which Bette plays one of the first modern
heroines, a legendary beauty whom everyone wants only for her
money; and, naturally, “Now Voyager,” in which Bette suffers worse
than Mildred Pierce
with a migraine but discovers the weaponry, and rewards, of couture.
Then there are the two roles which catapulted
Bette from just another chain-smoking, foul-mouthed bitch into
the stratosphere of MDH. In “All
About Eve,” Bette vamps like Tallulah
on angel dust, making herstory by being a woman playing a woman
in female drag. In “Whatever
Happened to Baby Jane?,” Bette’s grand-guignol turn as Baby
Jane Hudson practically handed Anthony Hopkins his Oscar--thirty
years before and a few chomosomes away from the fact. And he didn't
even thank her.
Finally, to answer the question with which you
thought you’d stump Mr. Diva, Bette Midler’s namesake did dabble
musically. She allieviates the tedium of Dinah
Shore in the wartime musical “Thank
Your Lucky Stars” by grinding her nicotine-scarred tenor through
a production number for, and about, our boys in uniform. Mr. Diva
has ascertained that her record, “Miss Bette Davis Sings,” is,
like Ethel Merman’s disco album, not available on CD. Let us all
thank our lucky stars. If anyone hears differently, please don’t
let Mr. Diva know.
However, as every diva-worshipper knows, Miz
Davis’ greatest moment was her final yahoo at the Academy
Awards, and not just because she had the balls to wear an apricot
fright wig. You see, Miz Davis had been contracted to give the
Best Picture Oscar--this during a decade when they made almost
no good pictures, forget about best. Well, Miz Davis ignored,
or perhaps couldn’t focus on, the teleprompter and launched into
a landmark tirade about “The
Sound of Music” (30+ years after the film’s release), all
while looking and sounding like one of the wicked trees in "The
Wizard of Oz." Even Mama Diva, who has been known to display
an attitude of her own, was impressed.
You have now learned the secret handshake of
MDH: survival. Mr. Diva hopes he’s not too late in relaying the
message.
By the way, dahling, Mr. Diva needs to return
that lipstick you sold him. It simply doesn’t leave enough of
a stain on his cigarette.
--Mr. Diva
Dear
Mr. Diva,
Does one have
to be a Bitch to be a Queen?
--Kat
Dahling
Kat,
Mr. Diva likes you. You forego such unimportant national dialogue
as the presidential cumrag in favor of issues that really matter.
Please phone Mr. Diva’s social secretary to schedule lunch.
Just as in fine tailoring there are buttons and there are buttons,
in divadom there are queens and there are queens. One kind of
queen, inconvenienced by a penis, spends his life making up for
the fact that he never got to be a cheerleader in high school.
The other kind of queen never had a penis but still didn’t make
the squad--because she never wanted to. During the golden days,
these two varieties of social deviant forged one magnificent,
acid-laced social strata. Arm in arm, queens romped with queens,
laughing hysterically at Dolce & Gabanna’s latest collection,
howling over each other’s Dierdre Hall scrapbooks, monitoring
each other’s bad boyfriends and cellulite.
Now, Mr. Diva always knew that not all queens were bitches.
But he never thought he’d live to see the day when one could be
a bitch without being a queen. Being a queen and being a bitch
require both homework and teamwork, a discerning eye and a sharp
tongue. But we are tragically mired in times where the lines are
so blurred that no migraine, no unprecedented weight gain, no
torrid love affair even raises eyebrows, much less hones wit.
How, then, are we going to train queens to wield the double-edged
sword of bitchery?
Divas are products of their times. Divas define while being
defined. Diva-worshippers latch onto idols for guidance, inspiration,
courage, and make-up tips. How can such a vital and delicate flower,
which depends upon the hothouse atmosphere of society, survive
in precarious times?
We thought we had it figured out by, say, 1988. The counter-culture
was dead, the wind beneath Bette’s wings was the flatulence of
a Disney deal, Cher was winning Oscars, and no one thought the
idea of Dolly becoming her own theme park was redundant. We took
a collective look around and realized that we were at the tail-end
of a decade which offered, for posterity’s delectation, Molly
Ringwald.
Flash-forward to 1992. An impressionable sissy steps off the
bus from Sphincterville ready to dip his toenails in the river
of fabulousness. Looks around. The river, alas, has run dry. That
fruit turns sour. Instantly, now believing that his natural pissiness--not
his regal stature or even superior taste--entitles him to bitchood.
The informal motto of the 1990’s, “been there, done that” is
inaccurate. What we really mean is “been nowhere, done nothing,
and don't know the difference." For proof, Mr. Diva offers, alas,
another personal anecdote. During a recent public appearance,
Mr. Diva actually witnessed a supplicant compare Mr. Diva’s artfully
constructed look du jour to the Widder
Cobain. Mr. Diva, of course, was insulted, but even more horrifying
is that this supplicant assumed such a comparison was a compliment.
In other words, dahling, we live in a society so undiscerning
that a disrespectful old rag such as Rolling Stone puts Courtney
on the same cover as Madonna
and Tina Turner. Breathing
the same air! And no one blinks!
The waiter (whom we saw teabagging
our second-best boyfriend at Champs two weeks earlier) is late
with our white-radish-and-key-lime couscous and must be assassinated.
Salespeople cower when they draw our names for cold-calling, for
we have carefully cultivated the image that we raise cobras as
a hobby. We no longer check out each other’s baskets at the gym
but the tensile strength of our tummy-tucks. We arm ourselves
with cosmopolitans
and Nat
Shermans and shoot ice cubes through our eyes and bleed anti-freeze
when we cut ourselves shaving. We are in the unspeakable position
of inflaming snidery without training royalty. Why? Because we’re
sick and tired of being sick and tired.
You don’t believe Mr. Diva? If the nineties had supplied us
with more divas, our bad moods would be better and your question,
though pertinent, would be moot. Queens would be defined by royal
attitude rather than sexual cargo. Bitchiness would be correctly
identified as a core competency of queendom instead of an independent
adjunct. We would jettison this ridiculous “been there done that”
zeitgeist in favor of actually going somewhere and doing something.
Our bitchery would have style, flair, elegance, not bitterness.
We would all be in on the joke instead of turning it on ourselves.
If queens--men, women, and all genders in between--would meld
bitchiness back into our demeanor and temper it with the intelligence
of observation and the warmth of experience, we would save society
as a whole. You require tinder for your flame? Listen to either
"Mechanical
Animals" or "Celebrity Skin" (your choice).
Mr. Diva rests his case
--Mr. Diva
Mr. Diva takes on the most complex subjects
and gives them names. Partake of his wisdom while he's in a generous
mood by e-mailing here.
Next Week: CMJ
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